


Secret Glitter

by doctorkaitlyn



Series: Ladies Bingo 2020 [16]
Category: Gravity Falls
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Presents, Sibling Bonding, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:35:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29406345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorkaitlyn/pseuds/doctorkaitlyn
Summary: “Wait,” Dipper says, reaching out and poking the sweater. “Why does this look like Wendy’s shirt?” His brain makes a series of logical leaps, moving from a to b to z in the blink of an eye, and he blurts out, "Wait, do you have a crush on Wendy too?”With a loud groan, Mabel throws her hands up and covers her face. “See, this is why I didn’t tell you!"(or, in an effort to figure out where Mabel keeps disappearing to, Dipper launchesOperation Identify Mabel’s Mystery Boyand ends up with a surprising result).
Relationships: Dipper Pines & Mabel Pines, Wendy Corduroy & Mabel Pines
Series: Ladies Bingo 2020 [16]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1956031
Comments: 4
Kudos: 11
Collections: Ladies Bingo 2020





	Secret Glitter

**Author's Note:**

> written for the 'Outsider POV' square on my [Ladies Bingo 2020](https://ladiesbingo.dreamwidth.org/) bingo card! As always, huge thanks to my partner for editing.

For weeks, Mabel has been acting suspicious. 

At first, Dipper doesn’t really think anything of it – after all, they spent the entire summer together. Even when they weren’t running from danger or dealing with the latest shenanigans to hit Gravity Falls, sharing a bedroom meant that even during the night, Mabel was only a few feet away, passed out with Waddles cuddled to her chest or telling Dipper to go the heck to sleep when he spent too much time staring into the journals by flashlight. The point is, having spent so much time together, it makes sense that Mabel is trying to find more opportunities for alone time. 

So he doesn’t bring it up. He doesn’t say anything when Mabel keeps staying after school, when she tells him to go on without her and make sure that Waddles is fed. He doesn’t say anything when she disappears during lunchtime, forcing him to make conversation with people who can’t possibly understand what wonders and terrors the world holds. He doesn’t say anything when she grows weirdly protective of her backpack, when she practically shrieks at him one day when he reaches for her zipper and asks if they can switch sandwiches. He doesn’t say anything when, late at night, long after their bedtime, he hears Mabel slip out of bed and head downstairs. Usually, despite his curiosity, he falls asleep before she comes back, but on the occasions where he does manage to stay awake long enough, reading underneath his blanket, eyes drooping and one ear listening intently for footsteps, she’s usually gone for an hour before she comes creeping back. As far as Dipper can tell, she’s never come back with anything that she didn’t have when she left, with the exception of the occasional midnight snack. 

Eventually, he has a realization. 

It occurs to him one day that Mabel isn’t acting weird because she wants some personal space. Maybe, despite the fact that she’s been quiet about the topic since they left Gravity Falls (quiet by Mabel standards at least), the issue isn’t that she wants time apart from Dipper. 

Maybe the issue is that she wants to spend time _with_ someone else. Namely, a boy. 

Once that realization occurs to him, Dipper is a little embarrassed that it took him so long to come to the conclusion. Grunkle Ford would be so disappointed in him. 

From that point on, the question that he wants to answer changes from _what is Mabel doing when she disappears?_ to _who is Mabel disappearing with?_

Realistically, he knows that it isn’t any of his business; Mabel deserves her privacy, after all. But he’s worried about her slipping out at night to meet someone. Knowing who that someone is might only make his anxiety worse, but at least he’ll have a face that he can project his anxiety onto. He could tell their parents and let them deal with it, but that would be the equivalent of taking an immediate trip to _Mabel doesn’t trust me anymore_ town. 

So, after a few days of weighing the pros and cons, during which Mabel continues to make herself scarce (although they spend some time together watching reruns of Duck-Tective and working on costume ideas for Halloween), Dipper decides to pursue the issue after all. 

One night, when Mabel slips out of their room again while he pretends to sleep, he takes advantage of her absence to do what he does best: namely, create a list. Opening up a blank notebook that he bought earlier in the day specifically for this purpose and clutching a small flashlight in his teeth, he writes out the name of his plan using a brand-new pen. 

_Operation Identify Mabel’s Mystery Boy._

Once the title is there, underlined a few times for emphasis, he twiddles his pen and stares down at the rest of the dauntingly blank page, frowning around the flashlight. After a moment of consideration, he carefully writes (1) by the left hand margin of the page before he goes back to staring. 

He isn’t sure where to start. Information compiling, putting together all that he knows about the mystery boy, is an option, but it only takes a few moments for him to realize that he knows absolutely _nothing_ about the mystery boy, other than the fact that something about him must be compelling enough to lure Mabel away at all hours of the day and night. There are boys at school that Mabel has fawned over since they returned from Gravity Falls, but those have been transient crushes, gone in a week or so. It’s possible that one of them may have caught Mabel’s attention in a more serious way, but it seems doubtful. 

Before he can stare at the page for much longer, he hears footsteps out in the hallway, and he immediately turns the flashlight off and shoves it and the journal underneath his bed. He’s just settled back onto his pillow when the bedroom door opens. The faint glow of the nightlight in the hallway is enough to confirm that it’s Mabel. With one eye half-open, Dipper watches as she drops into her bed sighs loudly, and pulls her blanket up to her neck. Within minutes, she’s snoring loudly, and it’s that sound that makes Dipper have another realization. 

Mabel is not a quiet person. She has never been a quiet person – when their parents want to embarrass her, they like to tell the story of how ear-splitting her cries were when she was a baby. 

(Their attempt never works – Mabel accepts the title with pride.) 

While she might not hit that same volume nowadays, that doesn’t mean that she doesn’t make noise. Sometimes, particularly when Dipper is looking for some peace and quiet or just plain annoyed, it seems like she never _stops_ making noise. She’s always giggling or humming or saying nonsense words under her breath, _do do do_ ing her way through life. Anything to do with boys is no exception – even her short-lived crushes have been indicated by lots of squealing and giggling on the phone with Greta and Candy. If there _was_ a new mystery boy in her life, even if she wasn’t willing to talk about him explicitly, Dipper doesn’t think that Mabel could hide it even if she _tried_. 

But during all of her late night sojourns, Dipper has never heard her make any of her trademark happy sounds. She’s never come back into the room humming, never collapsed into her bed with a giggle and a kick of her feet. The only sound Dipper has heard from her is the sound that she made tonight: the loud sigh of frustration. 

So maybe it’s not a boy that is keeping her up at night and making her disappear during the day. 

But if it’s not a boy, then what _is_ it? 

That question plagues him until he falls asleep, and when he wakes up, it starts to plague him all over again. 

&.

As the days go by, as Mabel continues to disappear both day and night, sounding more and more dejected each time she slips back into their bedroom, Dipper tries to think of a way that he can find an answer to his question without asking her outright or invading her privacy and spying on her. He could try to wait it out – maybe, sooner or later, Mabel will confide in him anyways. That would be the best option for everyone involved, but Dipper isn’t sure if his patience is capable of winning out over his investigative curiosity. He can _try_ , but much as Mabel has a near impossible time being quiet, he has a near impossible time _not_ doing everything he can to answer a question that he can’t easily solve. 

It seems like, no matter what approach he goes with, there are pros and cons, and sorting through all of them, trying to pick the decision that will do the least amount of harm for everyone involved, makes his head hurt. 

However, before he can force himself to make a decision, he ends up stumbling across the truth. 

It’s an accident. They’re on lunch, and Mabel didn’t show up to their table in the cafeteria. Since she is nowhere to be found, Dipper decides to use his unexpected free time to go to the school’s library. Grunkle Ford, who is currently sailing the South Pacific with Grunkle Stan, had mailed him a letter from Fiji that had contained a list of books for Dipper to look into so he could continue his education while he was away from Gravity Falls. Dipper isn’t sure whether any of the books are even in print anymore, let alone available at his school’s understocked library, but at the very least, he can take a look. 

The library is quiet, with only a handful of students working at the tables that form an aisle down the center of the room. Dipper wanders down the aisle, glancing back and forth at the placards attached to the end of each row, which announce the subject-matter of each stack. Eventually, at the near opposite end of the room from the entrance, he finds the science section.

Before he can start perusing the books on the shelves, he glances at the far end of the aisle and notices that Mabel’s backpack is resting against the wall. It's open, and there is a long length of green yarn hanging out of it. He can see her shoulder, clad in a bright purple sweater that it’s far too warm to be wearing, but the rest of her is still hidden from sight. For a moment, he remains in place, staring at what little of her he can see, rooted to the spot by indecision. 

Why is Mabel hiding her knitting away? She’s never been secretive about it before, has proudly made sweaters for people ranging from their parents to their postman to the cashier at a local ice cream shop that always gives them an extra scoop for free. Even when people have made fun of her for it, she’s refused to quit. 

Did someone make fun of her again? Now that they’re older, did it somehow hit harder? Is that what’s been going on? It doesn’t really explain why she’s been disappearing at night, but maybe she’s worried that _Dipper_ is going to make fun of her for it. It’s a wild theory, but it’s the only one that he can make fit with the facts that he has. 

Before he’s aware that he’s actively made a decision, he’s heading towards the end of the row, the letter from Grunkle Ford tucked away in his pocket for the time being. He tries to make his footsteps as loud as possible so that he doesn’t startle her, but when he steps around the corner and enters the knitting bubble that she’s created for herself, she still jumps. 

“Dipper!” she whisper-yells, dropping her needles into her lap. “What are you doing here?”

“What are _you_ doing here?” Dipper retorts, trying to keep his voice down as he drops down onto the floor beside her. “Is this where you’ve been hiding for the last few weeks?” 

“I haven’t been _hiding_ ,” Mabel replies with a roll of her eyes, but there’s a waver in her voice that completely ruins the confident façade she’s trying to put on. “I’ve just been…” Trailing off, Dipper waits for her to keep speaking, but instead, she just shrugs, fingers fiddling with the pile of fabric lying in her lap. Now that he’s up close, Dipper can see that she’s about halfway through a sweater. The arms are already done – what remains is most of the torso. Dipper can see that there are threads of black and silver throughout what currently exists of the sweater, almost making it look like plaid. In fact, the longer that he looks at the sweater, the more he realizes that the color and pattern look rather familiar. 

“Wait,” he says, reaching out and poking the sweater. “Why does this look like Wendy’s shirt?” His brain makes a series of logical leaps, moving from a to b to z in the blink of an eye, and he blurts out, "Wait, do you have a crush on Wendy too?” 

With a loud groan, Mabel throws her hands up and covers her face. “See, this is why I didn’t tell you! I knew you’d assume that! This is why I’ve been hiding from you.”

Dipper’s brow furrows in confusion. “So wait. You _don’t_ have a crush on Wendy?” 

“No! I mean, maybe a little bit? Like a tiny, baby crush? That’s not the point!” With another loud groan, she drops her head back against the wall with a _thud_. Even though Dipper really wants a more detailed explanation, he knows that pushing Mabel is more likely to make her run away, and now that he’s finally making headway, he doesn’t want to end up back at square one (or maybe at square negative one, since he’ll have to win Mabel’s trust again). So instead, he simply waits patiently, bringing his knees up to his chest and wrapping his arms around them. Eventually, Mabel sighs again and opens her eyes. Her hands drop down into her lap, absently combing through the yarn gathered in a heap. 

“It’s just that Wendy is so cool, right? Like the coolest person I’ve ever met.” Dipper nods enthusiastically. “And my friends keep talking about how their older siblings don't want to hang out with them anymore, and I know that Wendy didn’t have to put up with us this summer. But she did, and she actually _liked_ hanging out with us, and she saved our lives twice-“

“At least,” Dipper says solemnly. If he were to think about it, comb back through everything that happened this summer, he’s sure that the number would be much higher. 

“Exactly. And I know I already said this, but she’s just so cool! Like, she can climb trees and not even be scared, and beat people up-“

“She can beat _herself_ up.”

“Right! And she was just… fun! And I wanted to make her something nice for the holidays, something to send her since we won’t be going back to visit. I haven’t spent my allowance on anything other than yarn in _weeks_ , and I’ve made five sweaters, but… I don’t know. Every time that I finish one, it doesn’t seem _good_ enough for her. I feel like she’s going to laugh at it, or do that thing people do where they _say_ they like something, but you can tell that they’re gonna either throw the thing out or stick it in the back of their closet and never wear it. I don’t want either of those things to happen.” As she talks, her fingers pick at the sweater, like she’s already thinking of unravelling it again.

Dipper totally gets where she’s coming from – he spent too much time in the summer overthinking everything Wendy-related just because she was, as Mabel put it, so cool. He lost whole days brainstorming ways to impress her, ways to convince her that he was at her level of coolness. 

His crush may have been, in many ways, detrimental, but it also means that, because he knows all too well what it feels like to be hopelessly intimidated by Wendy, he’s in the best position to help Mabel out of this spot, regardless of whether or not she actually has a crush on Wendy. 

“Look,” he says, reaching out and gently tugging a piece of yarn away from Mabel’s fingers. “I get it. I really do. Wendy _is_ cool and badass and fun. But she’s also a bit of a dork, and she’s got a good heart. I promise, if you make her a sweater, she’s not going to think it’s lame, and she’s not going to laugh at it. She’ll probably love it. Besides,” he adds, “whatever you make her will probably fit a lot better than another hand-me-down from her dad.” 

“That’s true,” Mabel laughs. Raising her head and looking at Dipper, she says, “You really think she’ll like it?”

“Yes,” Dipper responds firmly. “And you should keep the silver in there. It’s like secret glitter.” 

“Glitter should never be a secret,” Mabel retorts. There’s a slight smile spreading across her face, reaching up to her eyes, and Dipper is beyond relieved to see it. 

“Speaking of secrets, you don’t have to hide this from me,” he says. “Just don’t stay up _too_ late knitting. I do still need to sleep.” 

“Okay.” After a moment of quiet, Mabel continues, “I’m not saying I _do_ have a crush on Wendy, but if I _did_ , would you be mad?”

It only takes a moment of contemplation for Dipper to shake his head. 

“Nah. Besides, it’s not like she’s more likely to date you than me. We’re the same age, you know.” 

“Not the _exact_ same age,” Mabel says before she unexpectedly throws her arms around Dipper’s neck. The hug takes him off guard, and it’s only the wall against his back that keeps him from tumbling over. One of Mabel’s needles (the blunt end, thankfully) is poking into his stomach, but he decides to ignore it for a few moments so that he can hug her back tightly. 

“There’s only one problem with all of this,” Dipper says, squeezing even tighter before he slackens his arms around her waist. When Mabel pulls away, there’s a wary look on her face. 

“What?” she asks, drawing the word out until it’s a few syllables longer than normal. 

“There’s no way I’m going to be able to come up with a present as cool as yours,” he answers, waving at the pile of yarn in her lap. “You won the contest before I even knew there was one going on.” 

This time, Mabel laughs loud enough to summon a librarian, who thankfully doesn’t throw them out. 

They spend the remaining minutes of lunch in the same space, engaged in separate pursuits. Mabel continues to work on her sweater, needles clacking softly as she works away, while Dipper actually finds one of the books that Grunkle Ford has recommended and, after blowing away what seems like thirty years of dust, he settles down beside Mabel and cracks it open.

That night, once Dipper has pulled the book back out from his backpack, Mabel, without a word, pulls her knitting out of her own bag and spreads it across her lap. Also without a word, Dipper angles the reading lamp attached to his headboard over at her, so that she has better light to work by. 

They don’t speak again until they say goodnight. 

For the first time in weeks, Dipper feels like all is right with the world.

&.

Mabel ends up going through two more iterations of Wendy’s sweater before she finishes the final product. She’s kept the flannel pattern, using black to outline the squares, and she’s switched out the silver that was previously threaded in for gold. In bland lighting, the gold only shimmers a little bit, but under bright light, it catches and gleams.

They pack it up along with his own presents (two photo albums that he’d put together with Mabel’s help and assistance, one for Soos and one for Wendy) and send it off mid-December. The following days are excruciating – as the package makes its way through the mail system, Dipper can tell that the anxiety is affecting Mabel. She’s even more restless than usual, and while she puts some of that energy to use making another new sweater for Waddles (who already has a wardrobe that rivals that of most people Dipper has met), it isn’t enough to totally burn it off. Sometimes, they’ll be sitting in complete silence, when her anxiety boils over. 

“What is she doesn’t like it?” 

“Should I have done the silver instead?” 

“What if she laughs?” 

Dipper does his best to comfort her, but it doesn’t help much. When Wendy calls them a week later on Mabel’s phone, his momentary spike in anxiety is quickly followed by relief. No matter what happens, at the very least, Mabel won’t have to wait any longer. 

“Hey, Wendy!” Mabel answers, putting the phone on speaker. To anyone who didn’t spend so much time with her, she would probably sound as chipper as normal, but Dipper can hear the worry filling her voice. 

“I got your sweater! I love it,” Wendy replies. “I’m wearing it right now! It’s so warm!”

“Really? You seriously like it?” 

“Yeah! Thanks, Mabel. No one has ever made anything like this for me before. I hope it didn’t take too long.” 

Mabel giggles nervously. “Not _that_ long.” 

“Okay, good! Seriously, I love it.” Suddenly, Wendy gasps loudly. “Wait, does this _sparkle_? Oh my God, dude, this is the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.”

Mabel’s grin is so bright that Dipper can barely look at her without sunglasses on. Whether she has an actual crush on Wendy or not (based on the way she’s acting, Dipper is leaning more towards the former than the latter), she is so clearly happy that he feels himself smiling simply from being in her proximity. 

While part of him wants to join the conversation, is itching to know whether Wendy and Soos liked their photo albums, now isn’t the time. Mabel deserves to bask in this for a few minutes, deserves to bask in the fact that Wendy liked her present. He isn’t going to step on her moment. 

So, while Mabel happily talks away, he slips out of the room to get a snack. 

Seeing as he knows full well what it’s like to have Wendy’s full attention focused on you, it’s the least that he can do for his sister.

**Author's Note:**

> as always, I can be found on [tumblr.](http://banshee-cheekbones.tumblr.com) :)


End file.
